Sussex's chemistry department has been spared the axe, but others have been shut. Is this the twilight of British chemistry? Plus, a new vaccine for bird flu

Desalination—the removal of salt from seawater to make it drinkable —has long been a possible answer to the world's water shortages. Can technological advances bring it into the mainstream, or will it remain too expensive and energy-inefficient?

Colour is a language not just of the senses, but of the various substances - animal and mineral, cheap and priceless - which have produced them

Nanotechnology-science that operates at the molecular level- has been threatening to become the "next big thing" for several years. But now it really is set to take off and products deriving from it will soon be changing everyday life

Molecular biologists can now tell us who is related to whom in the chain of life